A faint glimmering light illumines the backward portion of the web. Clouds and thick darkness hide the other end. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ (M241) Our long voyage of discovery is over and our bark has drooped her weary sails in port at last. Once more we take the road to Nemi. It is evening, and as we climb the long slope of the Appian Way up to the Alban Hills, we look back and see the sky aflame with sunset, its golden glory resting like the aureole of a dying saint over Rome and touching with a crest of fire the dome of St. Peter’s. The sight once seen can never be forgotten, but we turn from it and pursue our way darkling along the mountain side, till we come to Nemi and look down on the lake in its deep hollow, now fast disappearing in the evening shadows. The place has changed but little since Diana received the homage of her worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of the sylvan goddess, indeed, has vanished and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough. But Nemi’s woods are still green, and as the sunset fades above them in the west, there comes to us, borne on the swell of the wind, the sound of the church bells of Ariccia ringing the Angelus. _Ave Maria!_ Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant town and die lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marshes. _Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Ave Maria!_ NOTES. I. Snake Stones.(764) (M242) The belief of the Scottish Highlanders as to the so-called Snake Stones has been recorded as follows by a good authority at the end of the nineteenth century:— “A product called _clach-nathrach_, serpent stone, is found on the root of the long ling. It is of steel-grey colour, has the consistency of soft putty when new and of hard putty when old, and is as light as pumice-stone, which it resembles. It is of a globular form, and from one to three inches in diameter. There is a circular hole, about a quarter of an inch in width, through the centre. This substance is said to be produced by the serpent emitting spume round the root of a twig of heather. The _clach-nathrach_ is greatly prized by the people, who transmit it as a talisman to their descendants.”(765) II. The Transformation of Witches Into Cats. (M243) The European belief that witches can turn themselves into cats, and that any wounds inflicted on the witch-cat will afterwards be found on the body of the witch herself,(766) has its exact parallel among the Oraons or Uraons, a primitive hill tribe of Bengal. The following is the account given of the Oraon belief by a Jesuit missionary, who laboured for years among these savages and was intimately acquainted with their superstitions:—